Saturday, July 26, 2008

Grocery bag out of old t shirt tutorial

I have a FUN project for you guys today!
I remember somebody posted not too long ago wanting a pattern for cloth grocery bags...I couldnt find much that was super easy till now!
Step 1
Clean out your rapidly growing sons closet. find old t shirts with no holes in them.good luck!
Step 2
Lay out t shirt on a flat surface and cut out arms (cut away all the seam part, these are gonna be the openings you use to carry the bag, so make it as big or little as you like)
Cut out the neck. Cut under the rib knit part cutting away all of the seam.
Cut the bottom off so that you have about 5 or 6 inches under the arm hole. You can take this bottom part you cut off and hang on to it for now....
Step 3
Turn t shirt inside out and walk over to your sewing machine. Straight stitch a seam across the bottom once or twice depending on how confident you are. Repeat all steps for as many shirts as you can find.
Step 4
go shopping! Its Saturday have fun with your snazzy new bags! Or if your broke like me then pull out all the bottoms to the t shirts you just mutilated and.....
What the heck do I do with these bottoms????!!??
Many things!
Cut them into rectangle shaped window cleaning towels. Just snip off any seams still on them, and use it for a window cleaning towel, or a dishtowel!
Make reusable wipes for your baby!
Save them up to make a t shirt patchwork skirt!
Hang your husband from the highest tree with one!
Sew all the rectangle shapes together and make your baby a tiered skirt out of them! (make sure they are all the same width of course.)
Make a headband!
Choke your kids with them
Clean your car.
Use some strips from them to make cute ruffles on some knit fabric pants or shorts for your little girl. just sew a long stitch in the center of a 1 or 2 inch strip and pull the bobbin thread when your done and make it squish up and be ruffley and then sew it to the bottom, on the butt of course, of a pair of pants or shorts for your lil sweetheart!
I could go on but my brain is having seizures from all the thinking

Monday, July 21, 2008

My new kimono wrap top



I made my new wrap top! I looked all over and couldnt find a tutorial and I hate patterns with a passion so I just decided to go from a picture of some pattern pieces from a simplicity pattern I found. Hey as long as I have SOMETHING I can create pretty much anything.

As soon as I got up yesterday I got to work....after scoring two treasuries on etsy hehehe I decided to make a muslin for the baby first just to get the hang of it and make sure I got the concept right and stuff. Here is her Muslin. Its literally a muslin LOL. I made it from scraps just to get the hang of this.



She loved being measured for this top too. She just giggled. LOL
I do intend to make her a bunch of these cause they are just too cute. She will look awesome in one of these with her asian features.









So here is my top. I had about 2 yards of this really cool rayon type fabric that I was never gonna use for anything sellable, and I kinda liked it since it was pink and all. So I went to town on it. I made the sleeves like real kimono sleeves too, I thought it would look cool and I was right!











Here is another shot of the sleeves. I just love em. You can see where this ties too. Its a very comfortable top, and I feel pretty fancy wearing it. I AM gonna make more of these and I am gonna make them to sell, so as soon as I can get thru all the customs I have (5 total right now) I am gonna make a bunch of these for my shop

I still look at the pictures here and I cant believe I made THIS top with no pattern basically. I drafted the pattern for this. Yeah there are a few places that need tweaking but this is just my first try at a grown up size top. I cant believe I did that. Do you guys ever feel like that? You look at something you made and you think..Damn, I MADE that with my two hands! Maybe I am too philosophical LOL.


Once I get the details worked out there will be a tutorial on this. Its gonna be for the more advanced person though LOL Your gonna have to draft your pattern like I did mine so get your calulators ready. I will show diagrams of the pattern pieces and what they should look like and stuff. I hope to have it by the end of the week but like I said I got a lot of customs and am getting over the flu...yeah I got sick. Big herbal vitamin C junkie gets the flu. I couldnt kill it off this time. Got Maylee too. Got me worse though. I sound like Darth Vader when I breathe....its kinda cool.